You want to travel round Bulgaria? Well, if you do so then you need a car. If you don't have a car then the usual 2 other options are trains or buses.
Locals do know that trains are slow and dirty. They are permanently late, despite the fact that they are just a bit cheaper than the inter city buses.
Thus, if you want to travel faster you get the bus.
So, I was off this weekend. Decided to visit a friend of mine who's staying in a village close to Veliko Tarnovo.
I picked the bus option as a means of transport. There are plenty of companies going through Tarnovo on the way to Sofia every day. I wanted to get there faster, so my first option was Biomet.
Biomet are known for their regularity, nice new good-looking buses and the fact that they don't stop in every little village to drop or collect more people, thus ensuring faster travel.
I went to their office and bought myself a ticket on Thursday.
I was thinking .... finish work at 6 p.m., and go straight to the bus station. Bus leaves at 7 p.m., so hopefully I'd be in Tarnovo around 10 p.m. So, I'd have enough time for dinner, chit-chat and a lovely Friday evening.
But as per Murphy's Laws destiny had other plans. Ten minutes before the departure time the speaker system at the bus station announced that bus won't perform the trip.
I rushed back to the office of the bus line. The explanation of the ladies there - the bus's been broken and they were expecting it to be fixed by 7 p.m., but it wasn't.
My options - to get a refund for the ticket or take the next bus which was planned leave an hour and a half later - at 8:30 p.m.
Despite the list of bus lines available it appeared that there were no other buses leaving round that time. The competition options were due to depart around 10-10:30 p.m.
...and all of this happened on a Friday evening - usually a very busy period of the week.
Having no other options, I agreed to travel with the later bus. I wanted to enjoy the weekend and meet the friend. I was also hoping for some sightseeing in the area, but I'll leave the sightseeing part for another post.
There was this girl at the second guichet. She also had a 7 p.m. ticket. And a plane to catch which was leaving at 5 a.m., considering the fact that the trip to Sofia takes 6.5 hours and that the trip between the bus station and the airport is 30 minutes itself. I'll leave the calculations to you...
So, stuck at the bus-station for an hour and a half. Not enough time to go home and no place to have a cup of coffee, as all the shops at the station close at 7 p.m.
I was so annoyed that I didn't even think to take some photos of the shabby outlook of the area there. The inter-city bus station is there for ages, but seems that no one has ever considered to do some renovation.
At least I had a book to read and entertain myself.
Finally the 8:30 bus was positioned and we got on board. I had the feeling that at least 30% of the people there were like me - waiting since 7 p.m.
We were on. Just when the bus got on the highway the stewardess switched on the video. It was time for another movie to help time pass. The movie was called 'Giallo'. We had only watched about 15 minutes of it and she stopped it. Disk change. New movie. 'Daybreakers'. This one was more interesting. We managed to watch an hour out of it. Then it was scrolled forward and stopped.
By that time we were at the suburbs of Shumen. And we stopped. To let some people get off and some more to get on. Five minute break.
New movie: Sand snakes ( or sth like that). New stop - at Targovishte. Movie only lasted like 10 minutes and was replaced by 4th one - 17 again.
Well, this one survived till Veliko Tarnovo.
Yay, I made it. with 90 minutes delay at the start and four movies (lol) I finally reached my destination point.
I do hope that your trip will be more pleasant than mine. I really didn't expect it.
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